Recent

Channel Row expenses: basic provisions were vegetables, meat, butter, eggs. Although tea and coffee were sometimes bought, the regular drink was beer! Snuff also was customary. As well as rent and legal fees, payments were made to the smith, the ‘hucster’ woman, the basket woman, doctor, apothecary, coalman. At times, contracts were drawn up. e.g the gardener in 1728, “is to keep ye garden clean and in good order…and keep everything proper for ye kitchen in its season as ye ground will afford…if he fails…he’s to forfeit” [part of his wages]. He’s to carry all ye rubage out of ye garden and to ye garden bring in ye dung at his own cost.”

Taxation levied on Dubliners was often of a penal nature. Catholics had to pay tax for the upkeep of Protestant ministers, their clerk and church in each parish. The ministers’ money was paid to St Paul’s and St Michan’s as their buildings straddled both parishes. Besides these “Protestant” taxes, other taxes, (“cess”) included cess for workhouse and foundling, tax on the local river (“Bradoge cess”). The community paid “harth mony”, “lamp mony”, “Grand Jury cess for transporting felons”. It must have been galling for Catholics to pay the latter, who may have included relatives or friends. In later years new taxes were added for paving, pipe water, a police tax, a window tax. [to be continued in part 9]

From Sr. Maris Stella McKeown, Archivist, Mission Area of Ireland

For more details, see this website link WHO WE ARE, with Drop down menu –HISTORY and BOOKS.
The drop down menu in WHAT WE DO provides insights into how and where the seed, planted in Dublin in 1717, has grown and sprouted other branches in the following three centuries.